…..Jennifer Boatright..…drove with her two young sons and
her boyfriend….to buy a used car…. officer named Barry Washington pulled them
over……The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with
feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later.
Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and
Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money
laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and
their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over
their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal
charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not
be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services…… Later, she learned that
cash-for-freedom deals had become a point of pride for Tenaha, and that
versions of the tactic were used across the country. “Be safe and keep up the
good work,” the city marshal wrote to Washington, following a raft of
complaints from out-of-town drivers who claimed that they had been stopped in
Tenaha and stripped of cash, valuables, and, in at least one case, an infant
child, without clear evidence of contraband…… you needn’t be found guilty to
have your assets claimed…..in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable
cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused
of one……To Read More…..

Imagine you are
driving down the highway on your way to buy a car. You spent months researching
years, makes and models, and you finally found somebody who was selling the
exact ride you were looking for at a reasonable price. Suddenly, police pull
you over for allegedly going 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. Upon discovering the
$8,500 in cash you have on hand, the officers take you to jail and threaten to
charge you with money laundering unless you turn over the money. Frightened,
you give it to them.

This may sound like
something out of a Hollywood movie, but it’s a true story, and incidents like
it happen all too often across the country because of our civil forfeiture
laws.

Fortunately, the
victim in the above story, Roderick Daniels, had his property
returned by officials due to media attention and legal pressure. But
the power to take property without due process continues to be abused by local,
state and federal law enforcement officials. In my state of Michigan, grocery
store owner Terry Dehko
had his bank account seized by the IRS because it suspected him of being a
money launderer. Dehko would make cash deposits in the bank across the street
every night to reduce the threat of robbery and because of coverage limits on
his store’s insurance policy. Charges were never filed, but Dehko had to fight
in court to prove that his money was not being used in a criminal enterprise. ….To Read More….

Russ Caswell, 68,
is bewildered: “What country are we in?” He and his wife, Pat, are ensnared in
a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language.

This town’s police
department is conniving with
the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law — which is
less permissive than federal law — to seize his livelihood and retirement
asset. In the lawsuit titled United States of America v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury,
Massachusetts, the
government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in
1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps
$1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police
Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million.

The Caswells have not been
charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two
governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the
fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is
indistinguishable from robbery........
“Equitable sharing”
— the consensual splitting of ill-gotten loot by the looters — reeks of the
moral hazard that exists in situations in which incentives are for perverse
behavior. To see where this leads, read IJ’s scalding report “Policing for
Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture” (http://ow.ly/aYME1), a sickening litany of law enforcement
agencies padding their budgets and financing boondoggles by, for example,
smelling, or imagining to smell, or pretending to smell, marijuana in cars they
covet......To Read More....

Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the
most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under
civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property,
sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as
charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken
after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture,
owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars,
cash or other property.

Americans are
supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle
on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it
innocent.

Policing for
Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners
vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property
to boost their budgets. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a
direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws
encourage policing for profit, not justice.
Policing for Profit also grades the states on how well they protect
property owners—only three states receive a B or better. And in most states,
public accountability is limited as there is little oversight or reporting
about how police and prosecutors use civil forfeiture or spend the proceeds.

Federal laws encourage even more civil forfeiture abuse through a loophole
called “equitable sharing” that allows law enforcement to circumvent even the
limited protections of state laws. With equitable sharing, law enforcement
agencies can and do profit from forfeitures they wouldn’t be able to under
state law.

It’s time to end civil forfeiture. People shouldn’t lose their property without
being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement shouldn’t be able to profit
from other people’s property.

The
debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now
become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is
nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic
extremists are the ones causing all the problems.

But
what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary
Muslim practice and its extremist dark side? It can’t be beheading people in
public.

Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN
Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased
tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to
such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.

It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three
successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into
turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the
Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.

Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for
Obama.
And there are few Islamic terrorist groups that don’t have friends in high
places in the Muslim world.

If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have
to do to get really radical?

Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it
continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third
in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya
and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave
them. So that can’t be extreme either.

If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior
of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme?
What is it that makes ISIS extreme?

From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and
is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for
Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on
their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism
from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American
values.

The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme
because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims
is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of
Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.

Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic
legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our
ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain
of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.

That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the
strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our
politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing
with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told
them to say.

It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not
accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only
stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our
leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves
uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming
and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal
terrorists, not the extremists).

Our
government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate
regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk
us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate
because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program
forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening
without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very
willingness to negotiate is moderate.
The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists
and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar
keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim
Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even
while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist
groups in the Sinai.

A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and
then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign
that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.

That’s more than Secretary of State Kerry is willing to be.

Kerry views accusations of extremism as already too extreme. ISIS, he insists, are
nihilists and anarchists.

Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the
Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But as irrational
as Kerry’s claims might be, they have a source. The Saudis and the Muslim
Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea
that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links
to its actions.

This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to
fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own.

Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has
nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the
alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.

If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did
not?

The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of
Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or
not killing non-Muslims.

Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic dictators and Islamic
terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the
dictators were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights,
there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.

It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often
represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic dictators to
convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam
and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was
foolish of us.

The Islamic terrorist group is more mobile, more agile and more willing to take
risks. It plays the short game and so its violent actions are more apparent in
the short term. The Islamic dictatorship takes the longer view and its long
game, such as immigration, is harder to spot, but much more destructive.

ISIS and the Saudis differ in their tactics, but there was very little in the
way of differences when it came to how they saw us and non-Muslims in general.
The Soviet Union was not moderate because it chose to defer a nuclear
confrontation and because it was forced to come to the negotiating table. It
was still playing a long game that it never got a chance to finish. The Saudis
are not moderate. They are playing the long game. We can’t win the War on
Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.

Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam.
Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity
we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the
solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.

Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and
ambitions.
We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of
an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands
of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.

I wish to thank Daniel for allowing
me to publish his work.Daniel
Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman
Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center

Thursday, January 29, 2015

By Alan CarubaThis originally appeared here and I wish to thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work. RK

Fifty million Americans who live in
the northeast will experience what is predicted to be a historic blizzard from
Monday evening through Tuesday. Cities and towns will virtually or literally
close down. People will be told to stay indoors for their safety and to
facilitate the crews that will labor to clear the roads of snow.

In other words, welcome to Alaska, a
place that is plenty cold most of the year and which is no stranger to snow and
ice.

Alaska, however, has something that
the whole world considers very valuable; oil and natural gas. Lots of it. In
1980 a U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the Coastal Plain could contain up
to 17 billion barrels of oil and 34 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

In 1987, the U.S Department of
Interior confirmed the earlier estimate, saying that “in place resources” ranged
from 4.8 billion to 29.4 billion barrels of oil. Recoverable oil estimates
ranged from 600 million barrels at the low end to 9.2 billion barrels at the
high end.

A nation with an $18 trillion debt
might be expected to want to take advantage of this source of revenue, but no,
not if that debt was driven up by the idiotic policies of President Barack Obama
and not if it could be reduced by the same energy industry that has tapped
similar oil and natural gas reserves in the lower 48 states by drilling on
private, not public lands.

Instead, on Sunday President Obama
referred to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as “an incredible
place—pristine, undisturbed. It supports caribou and polar bears” and other
species and, guess what, tapping its vast oil and natural gas reserves would not
interfere in any way with those species despite the whopping lie that “it’s very
fragile.”

At Obama’s direction, the Interior
Department announced it was proposing to preserve as wilderness nearly 13
million acres of land in ANWR’s 19.8 million-acre area. That would include 1.5
million acres of coastal plains that Wall Street Journal reported to be
“believed to have rich oil and natural gas reserves.”

Not a whole lot of people choose ANWR
as a place to vacation. It is a harsh, though often beautiful, area that only
the most experienced visitor might want to spend some time. I would want to make
every environmentalist who thinks any drilling would harm the area have to take
up residence in its “pristine” wilderness to confirm that idiotic notion.

They would find plenty of caribou,
polar bears and other species hanging out amidst the oil and gas rigs, and along
the pipe line. The Central Arctic Caribou Herd that migrates through the Prudhoe
Bay oil field, just next to ANWR has increased from 5,000 animals in the 1970s
to more than 50,000 today. There is no evidence than any of the animal species
have experienced any decline.

The Coastal Plain lies between known
major discovery areas and the Prudhoe Bay, Lisburne, Endicott, Milne Point and
Kuparuk oil fields are currently in production In 1996, the North Slope oil
fields produced about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day or approximately 25% of
the U.S. domestic production. Alaska is permitted to export its oil because of
its high levels of productivity.

So why has Obama’s Department of the
Interior decided it wants to shut off energy exploration and extraction in a
whopping 13-million acres of what is already designated as a wildlife refuge and
along its coastlines on the Beaufort and Chukchi seas? The answer is consistent
with Obama’s six years of policies to deny Americans the benefits of the
nation's vast energy reserves, whether it is the coal that has previously
provided 50% of our electrical energy—now down by 10%--or access to reserves of
oil and natural gas that would make our nation energy independent as well as a
major exporter.

The good news is that only Congress
has the authority to declare an area as wilderness. It has debated the issue for
more than 30 years and in 12 votes in the House and 3 votes in the Senate it has
passed legislation supporting development and opposing the wilderness
designation.

And guess who is the new chairman of
the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee? Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an
Alaskan Republican. She also heads up the appropriations subcommittee
responsible for funding the Interior Department!

This latest Obama ANWR gambit is
going to go nowhere. It does, however, offer the Republican Congress an
opportunity to demonstrate its pro-energy credentials.

“I cannot understand why this
administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska,” said Sen.
Murkowski when informed of Obama’s latest attack.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Rob Saik, professional
agrologist, certified agriculture consultant and founder of Agri-Trend, spoke at TEDx Red Deer,
Alberta on GMOs. “Do you believe that agriculture can feed 9 billion people?”
he asked. “The real question is will agriculture be allowed to feed 9 billion
people?”“I believe the anti-science movement is the biggest threat to global
food security today. The voices of science are being drowned out by the voices
of fear and paranoia,” he said. Saik believe that the technology to feed people
already exists. He urged the audience to celebrate the accomplishments of
fertilizer, pesticides and genetic engineering in boosting agricultural
production while also providing more sustainable ways of farming. For example,
Bt crops have lowered pesticide use, he said, while adoption of GMOs in Brazil
has helped relieve pressure to tear down rainforests by increasing yields on
land already converted to agriculture…..To Read More…..

This month, more than 100 natural food brands,
including Clif Bar and Stonyfield, joined together in a drive to encourage the
Obama Administration to ban pesticides linked to bee deaths. The culprit, they
say, is neonicotinoids, which is a class of chemicals commonly called neonics,
introduced in the 1990s, that are mostly coated onto seeds to help farmers
control insects……Last November, the NRDC submitted signatures from almost
275,000 of its members urging EPA to respond to its legal petition to expedite
the review of neonics……. While many environmental activists, and some
scientists, have coalesced around the belief that neonics as a likely culprit,
most mainstream entomologists disagreed [saying] “extremely dubious” that
banning neonics, as many greens are demanding, would have any positive
effect……. Cities, states and provinces in Canada, egged on by environmental
activists, are beginning to act unilaterally. Ontario voted to ban the
chemicals, as have several cities or counties, including Vancouver; Seattle,
Thurston County, Wash.; Spokane, Wash.; Cannon Beach, Ore.; and Shorewood, MN.
Oregon held a hearing
recently to consider a policy that would limit neonics use……Last fall, UK farmer Peter Kendall
said he sprayed his crop with pyrethroids three times last year before giving
up, replanting and spraying again. This increased spraying with harsher
chemicals may harm the honeybees, which the neonics ban intended to protect in
the first place. . A 2014 study by
researchers at the University of London found that exposure to pyrethroids can
reduce bee size….To Read More…...

My
Take - When are we going to stop listening to these
eco-maniacs from organizations like the NRDC? When people stop giving them
billions - the government stops awarding them grant money - when sue and settle
is dealt with legislatively - when they start being sued by those they attack
and when someone in authority somewhere in the world decides they need to be
prosecuted under criminal law for the damage they cause and the lives their
policies have cost. One more thing. I found it interesting that pyrethroids are
now being called one of those "harsher" chemicals. When did that
happen? There was a time when they were touted by activists as an alternative
to "harsher" chemicals. Now they are one! Let's try and have clarity
on this. It will never matter what "better alternative" we adopt to
appease these activists because they can't be appeased. Whatever is adopted
today will be attacked tomorrow. We really do need to get this once and for
all!

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Attorney
Chris Horner writes in with this bombshell which shows how “evangelism” has
replaced factual analysis at the EPA, which is helped along by a compliant mass
media. See the attached document obtained via FOIA.
His take on it includes:

* Obtained from
the ongoing “Richard Windsor” FOIA, precisely as FOIA intended this allows the
American public to see what bureaucrats and, in this case, ideological
activists in government say among themselves and their pressure group allies,
helping us keep a proper perspective about what these same activists tell the
public.

* What this
memo shows is the recognition that EPA needed to move its global warming
campaign away from the failed global model of discredited Big Green pressure
groups and their icons, that it has proved “consistently — an unpersuasive
argument to make.” In it we see the birth of the breathtakingly disingenuous
“shift from making this about the polar caps [to] about our neighbor with
respiratory illness…”.

It also shows
the conviction that if they yell “clean air” and “children” enough they, the
media and the green groups will get their way.......
Possibly most
refreshing is the acknowledgement of EPA’s symbiotic relationship with a “cadre
of reporters” who EPA expects to demand an agenda — according to EPA, just like
pressure groups — to which demands EPA will respond.…..To Read More….

My Take - Okay, just because EPA and the green movement has been caught in a couple of "sue and settle" collusion cases.....okay.....a ton of collusion "sue and settle" cases, that does not justify believing in conspiracies......is it?

Okay, let's quelch this conspiracy stuff right now. Please watch the shiny swinging object and just relax and listen to my soothing and calming voice - There's no such thing as a conspiracy- There's no such thing as a conspiracy - There's no such thing as a conspiracy - There's no such thing as a conspiracy - There's no such thing as a conspiracy.....

Now when you awaken from your trance you will remember nothing .....NOTHING..... except that there's no such thing as a conspiracy. Do you understand?

Yes Master!

Oh, one more thing to remember - Green is good - green is good - green is good.....

It's my opinion that Thomas Sowell is one of the finest thinkers in the nation today, and it isn't because he understands complicated issues to well, it's because he has the unique ability to convey those complicated issues in ways that make them easily undestood. No small intellectual feat!
Thomas Sowell posted another of his insightful Random Thoughts on Tuesday Jan 27, 2015 - thirteen in all. Here's number one. To see the rest go here.

1. Who says President Obama doesn’t promote bipartisanship? His complicity
in Iran’s moving toward nuclear bombs has alarmed some top Senate Democrats
enough to get them to join Republicans in opposition to the Obama
administration’s potentially suicidal foreign policy.

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blogThe sky over New York City was a falling sheet of white. Trails of
footprints, work boots, paw prints, sneakers and bird claws, told their own
story of how the residents of city were getting through the blizzard to their
daily errands. Shoppers lugged home milk as if cows were going extinct.
Miniature snowmen decorated mailboxes and garbage trucks towing orange plows clattered
down empty streets.

Nowhere in the city was the blizzard more pronounced than in Central Park,
designed a century ago to create a miniature forest in the heart of Manhattan.
Even the tallest trees, taller than any others in the city, were layered with
coats of snow and visibility had vanished into a cloud of whiteness.

And walking along a path in the Ramble, I heard a woman lecturing her children
on the dangers of what else, but Global Warming.

There is a madness
to walking through a blizzard and discussing Global Warming. A theory according
to which we should be sliding toward the tropics, awash in fleeing polar bears
and Florida style temperatures, instead of frantically shoveling our driveways.

To believe in Global Warming while stamping the snow off your boots is not a
matter of science. It is a matter of faith. The scientist sees what is, while
the believer has faith in what he cannot see. The scientist does not see Global
Warming in a blizzard.

The Warmist does. To see Global Warming while walking through a blizzard, is
itself an act of faith.Every winter, Global Warming advocates stake their bets on a mild winter. And
every winter the snow and ice break their cars and shoes, but never their
faith.

Last year the New York Times was predicting the end of snow. This year the New
York Times building is snowlogged, but still keeping the faith.

No matter how much slush trails through its lobby, its writers must continue to
show people the pernicious effects of people driving to work and using extra
shopping bags. Digging out of a snowstorm and their own lies, Global Warming
advocates claim that colder winters are actually another effect of global
warming. Which may be renamed to Global Temperatures We Don't Like.

Walking through Central Park, it's easy to see how perverse the modern day
environmentalist has become in his view of the relationship between man and
nature.
Central Park was inspired by one of the co-founders of the Republican party,
New York Post editor, William Cullen Bryant, and co-created by Republican
architect and landscape designer Frederick Olmsted, to harmonize the natural
world and the urban one through human industry.

The New York Republicans of the 19th century viewed public parks as part of
their civilizing mission.

Central Park was created as part of an ongoing battle with the corrupt
Democratic Tammany Hall machine, which wanted segregated slums and downtrodden
workers who would rush to them as saviors and vote how they were told.

Bryant and Olmsted saw parks as a way to improve human health, inspire public
citizenship and build a strong republic.

Central Park's beauty is both natural and artificial. Modern environmentalists
often mistake it for a preserved space, but its natural beauty was the work of
human craftsmanship. The original site was a mess of swamps. The sort of place
that the EPA fights tooth and nail to protect for the environment. Had Central
Park remained a mass of swamps, the city and the country would have been worse
for it.

Instead of preserving the wetlands, Central Park's planners dredged them. They
created a place of great natural beauty by taking what was best in the natural
world and matching it to human use, instead of blindly worshiping at the pagan
altar of "Mother Nature". They built a lake so that visitors could
row boats. They set up rambling paths between woodlands of trees that they
planted. A meadow rose along with sheep and a shepherd. Everything was natural
and artificial.

While today's
environmentalists are fixated on holding back human development in order to
maintain wetlands, banning DDT to save the mosquito and campaigning against
agriculture to reduce population growth-- the visionaries behind Central Park
did not restrict human development for the sake of nature, instead they used
human industry and the state of the art technology of the time to turn a
decrepit site used for slaughterhouse refuse, swamps and shantytowns into a
magnificent park that seems effortlessly natural.

They did not do it to glorify nature, but to improve man.

Environmentalists demonize human industry and accomplishment as evil because they
worship nature. Humanity spoils the unspoiled natural environment. It kills the
mosquitoes, destroys malaria and turns lovely swamps into ugly parks full of
hideous children enjoying themselves.

In their worldview, for the environment to prosper, humanity must go into
decline. And when humanity prospers, they insist that the environment is in
decline.

Conservationists, who included the likes of President Theodore Roosevelt,
valued the natural world for what human beings can learn about themselves from engaging
with it. That was the philosophy behind Central Park, which to this day remains
an elegant demonstration of human accomplishment as applied to the natural
world.

Global Warming is an ideological weapon by the environmentalists against human
civilization. It is part of a broader anti-civilization agenda by the left,
which values the natural world only because it sees it as a
"primitive" antidote to the complexities of civilization. That
romanticism is the borrowed hostility of the nomad to the farmer (and it is
very telling to look at Europe and see its intellectuals championing the
virtues of Bedouin nomads over London and Paris) taken up by bored
intellectuals, arguing against the complexity of civilization and for the noble
barbarism of the savage.

Where the conservationist values the natural world because of its beneficial
impact on the human spirit through cultivation and achievement, the
Environmentalist does not truly value the natural world, he does not love
nature, he only hates civilization. Where the conservationist sought out the
natural world for its civilizing effects, the environmentalist seeks it out for
its decivilizing effects. He does not want to be a better human man, but less
of a man. He wants to be a noble savage.

The conservationist sought to integrate the natural world into our lives in
order to build a better civilization. The environmentalist is not interested in
building a better human civilization. His objective can only succeed if every
human being, every building, factory, car and artifact vanished off the face of
the earth tomorrow. His environmentalism is a mask for his hostility to human
civilization.

Central Park does not duplicate Manhattan before the arrival of the settlers, a
trendy bit of landscaping that environmentalists are rather fond of. But then
who besides environmentalists would fancy the idea of reverting Manhattan to a
swamp bordered island with poor water sources and high rates of disease?
Instead it creates something better, improving on the natural world,
cultivating land into a transcendent statement that is more about man than
nature.

Where Global Warming insists that everything humans do just makes the world
worse, Central Park is a shining statement that says we make it better.

Every Warmunist ad is a parable about the evil of humans who chop down forests,
pour oil into the oceans and refuse to put things into clearly marked recycling
containers. Central Park opens up the natural world to human activities. The
ideas of Olmsted about good citizenship and the natural world did not involve
teaching people to leave the natural world alone, but to make it a part of our
cities.

Environmentalists
today sneer at this attitude. They clamor against hunting and fishing. They
agitate to restrict human access to national parks. They push Zero Population
Growth and mandatory birth control. Their "Green", like that of the
Islamic Green, burns with hate for the Red, White and Blue. For human
civilization.

Much of the public thinks environmentalism is a good idea, because they think
it's ultimately meant to benefit them. Environmentalism however is an ideology
that champions the Supremacy of Nature, better known as the ecosystem covering
the surface of the Earth, over man. Where Conservationism believed in the
Supremacy of Man, and the utilization of the natural environment for mankind's
benefit, the environmentalist doesn't give a damn about mankind's benefit. Less
so than he does about an endangered mollusk.

Walking through the blizzard, the trees wreathed in bridal veils of snow, I
heard their voices in the distance, a distance that in the whiteness may have
been only a dozen feet away. "The scientists say Global Warming is
coming", the mother said. "It's too cold out for that," answered
the little girl.

I wish to thank Daniel Greenfield
is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of
the David Horowitz Freedom Center for allowing me to publish his work.

Jihad in the
Philippines: Muslim Fighters Kill 27 Cops: Officials - The
Philippines has made extraordinary concessions to the violent Muslim uprising.
But as we know, that only leads to more violence and more demands for an even
bigger Islamic State. Islamic terror rages
on in the Philippines. Worse, these supremacist savages are rewarded.
The modern-day manifestation of the caliphate, the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC), has “observer status” in the “talks” between the Philippine
government and the jihadist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Muslim
terrorists slaughter and the OIC “mediates.”It would be comical if it weren’t so deadly. The Philippines (a former
American protectorate and 95% Catholic country) has had to give up territory
and “share wealth” with...

BBC Chief: We
must not call Charlie Hebdo killers ‘terrorists’ - This
is a perfect example of the sickness in the media that I rail against every
day. Sanitizing savagery. Whitewashing Islamic jihad. My G-d man, they are
beheading journalists. Why is the BBC sharpening the dull blade at their own
necks (and ours)?
Infiltration.We are under siege by the
jihadists, a siege made possible by their their step and fetchit errand boys on
the left.This is why Atlas Shrugs is so
critical……

Turkish court
orders Facebook to block pages insulting Mohammad - Obama’s
number one “trusted” and “most favorite” ally, Turkey — the “moderate” Muslim
country. It is astonishing how much damage the abdication of the leader of the
free world can do in so short a period of time. The twentieth century of
Ataturk is now a mere historical blip. The secular Muslim countries of Africa
and the Middle East are drowning in a sea of blood unleashed by devout Muslim
wars.And Obama has been instrumental in
all of it…..

Pentagon Creates
Essay Contest To Honor Saudi King, Muslim World - President
Obama couldn’t go to France to stand for freedom of speech in the wake of the
Islamic slaughter of the editorial staff of a French weekly magazine but he’ll
fly to Saudi Arabia for the King of shariah and then force feed this dung down
the throats of our schoolchildren.We
are under siege, my fellow Americans. Jihad in the White House.Dhimmitude and submission at the most senior
levels.TR:
The Pentagon announced Monday that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin
Dempsey has come up with a way to honor the recently deceased Saudi monarch,
King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz: an essay contest.Despite Saudi Arabia’s abysmal record
on human rights, the contest, to be hosted by the National Defense
University,......

84% of
“Palestinian” Muslims believe Israel was behind Paris jihad mass murder
- Here’s the craziness: thousands of “Palestinian” Muslims protested
Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech. They support the slaughter
commanded under Islamic law (Shariah). They agree with the murderers. But at
the same time, they have no trouble holding the completely conflicting view
that the Jews did it. No wonder they are so violent — their brains explode
along with their bombs. “Israel was behind terror attacks in France,” by Nan
Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, January 25, 2015:Following the terror attacks against the Charlie
Hebdo magazine and a Jewish store in which Muslim terrorists killed 17 people
in France earlier this month, columnists writing for the official
Palestinian...

Thousands of
Muslims Protest Charlie Hebdo Cartoons - Instead of
seeing tens of thousands of Muslims protesting the slaughter of writers and
cartoonists, we see the Muslim world standing in support of the savage law that
calls for the death of those who criticize this monstrous ideology.“Pakistan: 30,000 rally against Charlie Hebdo
and the freedom of speech”, thanks to Jihad Watch,
January 25, 2015.How good it would be
if, in the face of these ongoing and growing protests, we had a Western leader
who would stand up and explain why the freedom of speech is important, and
declare that we were determined to defend it. But we don’t.“Blasphemous caricatures:...

Italy: Muslims
Urinate on and Destroy Virgin Mary Statue - More of that mutual respect and mutual understanding we
are always being schooled on by our Islamic superiors. Imagine if anything,
even remotely like this, was ever attempted in a mosque — the mind reels. Photo
above from a previous
desecration of a Virgin Mary statue by Muslims.They are slaughtering people and burning
churches because of a couple of drawings. Imagine this.Italy: Muslims Destroy and Urinate on Virgin
Mary Statue, [Source:
Alerta Digital] Portuguese (thanks to Raymond
Ibrahim), January 17, 2015.January
9. A man was kneeling in prayer before the statue of the revered Madonna, with
the photograph of a loved one in hand, in the small chapel of St. Barnabas in
Perugia (Italy), when he was attacked by...

Progressives will
always claim that no matter how badly their plans go wrong, at least their
terrible policies were well-intentioned. The regimes that
shot orphans, starved entire cities into submission and committed genocide were
“caring” in comparison to the heartless Dickensian capitalists who did nothing
for the poor except create cheap products and jobs. They might have killed
millions, but their red hearts were in the right place.

They didn’t just
spend all their time gobbling caviar and diving into swimming pools full of all
money like the millionaires of the West. Instead they gave speeches about
Marxism-Leninism, killed anyone who wasn’t up on their dialectical materialism
and then gobbled working class caviar and dove into proletarian swimming pools
full of money.....To Read More.....

Monday, January 26, 2015

A couple of months ago, effective in November, National Grid,
one of Massachusetts’ two dominant utilities, announced
rate increases of a “whopping” 37% over last year. Other utilities in the
region are expected to follow suit.

It’s dramatic headlines like these that make rooftop
solar sound so attractive to people wanting to save money. In fact, embedded
within the online version of the Boston
Globe story: “Electric rates in Mass. set to spike this winter,” is
a link to another article: “How to install solar power and save.” The solar
story points out: “By now everyone knows that solar power can save
homeowners big money on utility bills.” It claims that solar works even in New
England’s dreary winters and cites Henry K. Vandermark,
founder and president of Solar Wave Energy in Cambridge, as saying: “Even snow
doesn’t matter if your panels have a steep angle. It just slides right off
them.”

Solar is not the panacea it is promoted to be, though it
is true that—after a substantial investment, heavy government subsidies (funded
by all taxpayers), and generous net-metering programs (that raise costs for
non-solar customers)—solar systems can save money on the typical homeowners’
monthly bill. (An unsubsidized system averages about $24,000.)

New England has seen one big power plant close within the
past year—Salem Harbor Power Station in Salem, MA, went “dark” on June 1, in
part due to tightening federal regulations. Another major closure will take
place within weeks: Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

A new, state-of-the-art natural gas plant on 18 acres of
the 65-acre Salem site will replace the Salem Harbor plant (photo). The
remaining 47 acres will see redevelopment, including renewable energy. But,
that plan has received pushback from environmental groups that want it fully
replaced with renewables. TheBoston Globe
states: “A decade ago, replacing the aging plant with a far cleaner natural gas
facility would have thrilled environmental and public health advocates.” The Conservation
Law Foundation filed a lawsuit against the project’s approval,
claiming the state “failed to adequately consider its own climate change law
when state energy officials approved the Salem plant.” In February, the group
settled the suit after it caused construction delays and reliability concerns.

Just days before the plant closed, a report
from The Daily Climate addressed
the controversy over usage of the Salem Harbor site: “Many activists pushed
back, arguing for wind or solar generation or non-energy uses, such as a marine
biotechnology research facility.” One activist group: HealthLink, “has
marshaled opposition to running a gas line to the new plant,” and another:
Grassroots Against Another Salem Plant (GAASP), “has pledged to use peaceful
civil disobedience to block construction of the gas plant.”

The state of Massachusetts has offered three closed, or
scheduled to be closed, coal-fueled power plant sites $6 million to pursue
renewable energy projects—even though wind and solar require full back up from
fossil fuel power plants so electricity is available in the frigid Northeast
winters. Additionally, a new report
from two Stanford Ph.D.’s, who spent 4 years trying to prove renewables can,
ultimately, replace fossil fuels, have had to admit defeat: “Renewable energy
technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”

Having lived with the 63-year-old Salem Harbor plant in
her back yard for 20 years, Linda Haley, doesn’t, according to
WGBH
News, “understand why Salem would encourage use of a non-renewable
fossil-fuel resource like natural gas when alternative investments in Green
technology finally seem possible.”

These stories reveal the snow job that has been
perpetuated on the general public regarding renewable energy. They don’t
understand the need for power or how it works. They seem to believe that when a
rule passes a magic wand waves replacing older, but still fully functional,
power plants with wind or solar — that doesn’t produce electricity 24/7/365 as
do the decommissioned coal or nuclear plants — and which require far more land
to produce the same amount of, albeit intermittent, electricity.

An iced-up wind turbine or a solar panel covered in 7
feet of snow—even if some of it slides off—doesn’t generate electricity. And
the cold days of a Northeast winter create one of the times when energy demand
peaks.

Remember last winter’s polar vortex, when freezing
weather crippled the Northeast for days and put a tremendous strain on the
electric supply?

Congress, following the near crisis, brought in utility
executives to explain the situation. Regarding the nation’s electrical output
last winter, Nicholas Akins, the CEO of the biggest generator
of coal-fueled electricity in the U.S., American Electric Power (AEP), told
Congress: “This country did not just dodge a bullet—we dodged a cannon ball.”
Similarly, Michael Kormos, Executive VP of Operations for PJM
Interconnection (the largest grid operator in the U.S. overseeing 13 states),
commented on operations during the polar vortex: PJM was “never—as some
accounts have portrayed—700 megawatts away from rolling blackouts. … On the
worst day, January 7, our next step if we had lost a very large generator would
have been to implement a small voltage reduction”—industry speak for the last
option before power outages.

About last winter’s grid reliability, Glenn Beckclaims:
“I had an energy guy come to me about 3 weeks ago. …He said, ‘We were one power
plant away from a blackout in the East all winter long… We were using so much
electricity. We were at the top of the grid. There’s no more electricity. We’re
at the top.’”

This winter’s extreme weather—with new
records set for November power demand—has already arrived. Come January,
there will be not one, but two, fewer Northeast power plants since last
year—not because they had to be retired, but because of EPA regulations and
public sentiment. In a November 17 op-ed, former Senators Bayh (D-IN) and Judd
(R-NH) said:
“Vermont Yankee produced 26% of New England’s power during the peak of last
year’s frigid weather.” The Northeast won’t have Vermont Yankee’s power this
January.

Without these two vital power plants, what will the
Northeast do?

For several months, since I had a chat with Weather Bell Analytics’ Joe
Bastardi at the International
Conference on Climate Change, I’ve continued to say that I fear people will
have to die due to power outages that prevent them from heating their homes in
the winter cold, before the public wakes up to the damage of these policies.
AEP’s Atkins seems to agree. He toldColumbus Business First: “Truth
be known, something’s probably going to have to happen before people realize
that there is an issue.”

“New England is in the midst of an energy crisis,” claims
WGBH News. The report continues: “Residents and businesses are facing a future
that may include ‘rolling blackouts’ on days when usage is highest.”

ISO New England, the agency that oversees the power grid,
warns,
in the Boston Globe: “Boston and
northeast Massachusetts are ‘expected to face an electricity capacity shortage’
that could lead to rolling blackouts or the use of trailer-mounted diesel
generators—which emit far more pollutants than natural gas—to fill the gap.” Ray
Hepper, the lawyer for ISO New England, in a court filing, wrote: “The
ISO simply cannot make megawatts of generation materialize that are not on the
system.” In an interview, he added: “We’re really, as a region, at the point of
needing new power plants.”

As the Salem Harbor story illustrates, natural gas will
likely fuel those new power plants and environmental groups are expected to
challenge construction. Plus, natural gas faces cost volatility. On November
20, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ),
in the wake of November cold, not experienced since the 1970s when global
cooling was predicted, featured an article titled, “Chill pushes up natural-gas
prices,” that stated:
“Natural-gas stockpiles shrank by more than expected last week reflecting
surging demand.” As in the ’70s, many are now projecting,
based on solar activity and other natural variables, a long global cooling
trend.

While the Boston Globe,
in September, said:
“The upcoming winter is not expected to be as cold as last season,” Bastardi
told me otherwise. He said: “This winter could be as cold and nasty as last
year and in a worst case go beyond that to some of the great winters of the
late 1970s, lasting all the way into April. As it is, we still have a winter
comparable to last year forecasted, though the position of the worst, relative
to averages, may be further southeast than last year.” During a November 19
appearance with Neil Cavuto, Bastardi suggested that we may
see a bit of warming after November, but will have one, or two, very cold
months after that.

The WSJ
quoted Brian Bradshaw, portfolio manager at BP Capital in
Dallas: “‘Everyone thinks it’s not possible’ to have another winter like last year,
‘But the weather does impossible things all the time.’” The WSJ added: “The natural-gas market is
setting up for a repeat of last winter.”

So, why, when natural gas prices sit at historic lows
that experts predicted will lower electricity rates, is the Northeast facing
double-digit increases? The answer: there is no magic wand. The changes have
been mandated, but the replacements aren’t ready yet. Ray Gifford,
former commissioner with the Colorado Public Utility Commission, told me: “I
don’t see how the gas infrastructure in New England can be built fast enough to
replace retiring baseload capacity.”

Within the past decade, natural gas went from supplying
less than a fifth of New England’s power to one half—which could be great if
New England had natural gas, but it is, as Tim Maverick,
Commodities Correspondent for Wall Street
Daily, says: “gas-starved.” After last winter’s freezing weather,
Maverick wrote:
“The Northeast was slapped in the face with the reality that there’s not
sufficient pipeline infrastructure to provide it with the mega-energy pull it
draws in the colder season. This is probably because not one new pipeline
infrastructure has been introduced in over 40 years. Natural gas consumption in
the Northeast has grown more than 20% in the last decade, and not one new
pipeline has been built. Current pipelines are stuffed and can carry no more
supply.”

At the Edison Electric Institute financial conference on
November 11, AEP’s Atkins confirmed that the proposed timeline to cut pollution
from the EPA will shutter coal plants before completion of construction of new
power plants using other fuels, or the infrastructure to move the needed
natural gas around.

The lack of available supply results in higher prices.
The Boston Globe explains: “Gas
supplies for home heating are purchased under long-term contracts arranged far
in advance, so utilities have the advantage of locking in lower rates. Power
plants, on the other hand, often buy shorter term and are more exposed to price
movements in the spot markets.” In the winter’s cold weather, the gas goes to
people’s homes first. Different from coal, which is shipped by train, with a
30-day supply easily held at the point of use, the switch to natural gas leaves
power plants struggling to meet demand, paying higher prices.

Addressing the 2013/2014 winter, Terry Jarrett,
a former public service commissioner and a nationally recognized leader in
energy, utility, and regulatory issues, said:
“Natural gas couldn’t shoulder that burden, due in part to a shortage of
infrastructure to deliver gas where it was needed—this despite record-setting
production in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere. But more importantly, whereas
coal’s sole purpose is to generate electricity, natural gas is also used for
home heating. And when push comes to shove, heating gets priority over
generation.”

Last winter, coal and nuclear met the demand to keep the
lights on and heat homes and businesses. AEP reports that 89% of its coal
plants, now slated for retirement, ran at capacity just to meet the peak
demand.

These shortages in the Northeast occur before the
implementation of Obama’s Clean
Power Plan that experts believe will shut down hundreds of coal-fueled
power plants nationwide by 2016. New pipelines and new plants need to be built,
but “not-in-my-backyard” attitudes and environmental activists will probably
further delay and prevent construction as they have done in the Northeast,
which will result in higher electric bills nationwide.

“Because less-expensive coal generation is retiring and
in part is being replaced by demand-response or other potential high energy
cost resources, excess generation will narrow and energy prices could become
more volatile due to the increasing reliance on natural gas for electricity
generation,” PJM’s Kormos told Congress.

The lessons for America’s energy supply learned from the
Northeast’s far-reaching experiment, which has only resulted only in price
increases and potential energy shortages, are twofold. First, don’t shut down
existing supply until the replacement is ready, as legal action and local
attitudes can slow its development. Second, you can cover every square inch of
available land with wind and solar, but when extreme weather hits, it requires
a reliable energy supply, best met by coal and nuclear.

Current policy direction will have all of America, not
just the Northeast, freezing in the dark. I hope it can it be turned back
before it is too late.

NOTE: A version of this content was originally published
at Breitbart.com.

About Me

Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. That is the only factual definition of green that will stand the test of time. After that; any other definition is a corruption of a perfectly nice color. I have been an exterminator for 35 years. I have served as a trustee on industry association boards representing pesticide and fertilizer applicators actively for almost 25 years. I believe that what we do isn't just a job; it's a mission! We are that thin gray line that mans the wall telling the world; "no one will harm you on my watch". I also believe that to be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against. Our greatest worry is those within who support and facilitate their misanthropic goals.